Google's Sergey Brin Denies Chrome Is OS for Web Apps

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the new Chrome Web browser is not the Web operating system many people see it as, but acknowledges it will get more robust through the open-source community under the Chromium project. Microsoft and other search engines and Web services providers must be wary about this evolution in application development. Google may be treading lightly with Chrome now, but the browser, combined with Google's search and Apps, could end up being a big threat to Microsoft Windows' market share.

Despite attempts by reporters to goad Google into spiking Microsoft, Google
co-founder Sergey Brin denied that Google views its new Chrome browser as an
operating system for Web applications.

"I would not call Chrome the operating system of Web apps," Brin said
after a demo of Chrome Sept. 2 at the company's Mountain
View, Calif., headquarters,
where the company released Chrome as an open-source project under the name
Chromium. He added:

I think it is a very basic, fast
engine [for running] Web apps and I think we'll see more and more Web apps of
greater sophistication, all the kinds of things that today are pretty
challenging to do on the Web because of browser performance, whether it's image
manipulation or even video editing. We think that with Chrome, [apps] will be
able to bridge that divide and you're going to be able to do more and more
online.

Brin hedged his comments by adding that Chrome is just step one and that the
platform under the open-source community will make it more robust and powerful.

Okay, so Brin might not want to proclaim Chrome as the Web OS to supplant
Microsoft's entrenched Windows operating system yet, but it's clear from his
comments that Google is moving in that direction. So far, so good. eWEEK's Jim Rapoza applauds Chrome in his review here.

When Google accidentally leaked its Chrome comic book Sept. 1, reporters
and analysts, including yours truly and my colleague Joe Wilcox, argued that Google could make Chrome
the premier Web operating system by combining it with its market-leading search
engine and increasingly popular SAAS (software as a service) applications. This
would eventually constitute a threat to Windows.

And that would spell doom for Microsoft. It's one thing to squeeze Microsoft
out of the Internet game by dominating search and Web services. It's another
entirely to come after the software giant's core operating system business,
wielding the Web as your platform.

However, Google executives refused to paint Chrome as the technological torpedo
that I and others believe it could be versus Microsoft and other Web browser
makers such as Mozilla and Opera.